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POETRY FOR PEOPLE WHO DON’T LIKE POETRY.

Poetry pioneers Bang Said The Gun continue their rise as the Best Poetry Night in the UK (voted by the Times) performing at the Vault Festival 2019, having taken their trademark raucous stand-up poetry to the venue last year. The spoken word impresarios will showcase their latest verse on 15th March with a special guest.

Started as an antidote to dreary poetry and even drearier poetry nights, co-founders Dan Cockrill and Martin Galton established the spoken word club in a pub in Soho before it transferred to Borough. Since January 2016, the raw, fast-moving and highly-energised night has continued its rise with a completely sold out monthly residency at the Bloomsbury Theatre, various one-off shows including an Underbelly Festival performance and a UK tour. The collective feature a rich mix of new talent and some of the most established names in poetry, with special guests including Roger McGough CBE (BBC Radio 4’s Poetry Please presenter), Kate Tempest (Ted Hughes award winner), Tim Key (star of The Alan Partridge Movie),Sir Andrew Motion (ex Poet Laureate),and Hollie McNish (Ted Hughes Winner 2017). Mention TOUR triumphant UK tour

Cockrill says: “we have dragged poetry kicking and screaming into the 21st century”
Galton says: “the night is a rollercoaster of emotion... It’s loud and raucous, as political as it’s trivial as serious as its funny”

Bang Said The Gun has had 15 films broadcast on Channel 4 and an anthology, Mud Wrestling With Words published with Burning Eye Books. The show has also played to audiences in the North-West with Bang Said The Gun: Manchester and across the Atlantic with Bang Said The Gun: New York. Additional Bang members include Rob Auton (shortlisted for Arts Foundation Spoken Word Award and former Glastonbury poet in residence) and Laurie Bolger (shortlisted for Young Poet Laureate for London and former Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park poet in residence).

Poetry pioneers Bang Said The Gun continue their rise as the Best Poetry Night in the UK (voted by the Times) performing at the Vault Festival 2019, having taken their trademark raucous stand-up poetry to the venue last year. The spoken word impresarios will showcase their latest verse on 15th March with a special guest.

What the press say

A raucous combination of poetry and comedy The Telegraph

Grabs poetry by its shoulders and shakes it until dirty, funny words fall out Kyra Hanson, Londonist

London’s premier spoken word night Wendy Davies, London Le Cool

Like all the best things in life, BSTG is done with belief and passion Phill Jupitus

There has never been a show quite like this before. It’s time is now Murray Lachlan Young

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Venue Details

Eight unbelievable venues, three stylish bars and a top-notch restaurant, all hidden beneath Waterloo. From 6pm until the early hours, there’s nowhere else you need to be. Welcome to VAULT 2016

“The business model for the creative industries is broken. For every performer at Edinburgh working for nothing, read musician on Spotify or writer on the net. Providers of content make peanuts, while the controllers of the infrastructure… walk away with extraordinary profits. … How can we transfer some of the wealth grabbed by, say, hotels in Edinburgh and hand it to the people who generated it?”
Patrick Collinson, The Guardian, 29 / 8 / 15

We want VAULT Festival to be the people’s festival. For six weeks, join this carnival of experience, filled with entertainment and around every corner an unexpected adventure. From hard-hitting drama to outrageous comedy, from dance to late-night parties, VAULT takes in the bravest and best of the next generation of creators.

“It’s risky to bring a show [to Edinburgh Festival] that you know needs a lot of development in the faint hope that someone will spot a gold nugget and offer to help nurture it. In any case, if you are only here with something in the hope of catching someone’s eye, you are selling audiences short. They should be the people you really make the show for, not some producer who may or may not pitch up.”
Lyn Gardner, The Guardian, 20 / 8 / 15

We put up the flag here at the edge of theatreland, and gather acts & artists, bands & companies from all over to come and make something unforgettable. It’s their festival, and we’re inviting you to celebrate it with us.

We’re doing our best to reinvent the non-funded creative sector and make it sustainable for both the artist and the festival. What we give is space: to innovate, take risks and cooperate with each other. We don’t charge rent. We do take 30% of show box office, which goes some way – but not all the way towards covering our costs. In this way, Artists and Festival live or die together.
Come and see what the people have made: there’s a conversation every single night about where we go from here. There’s three great bars, fantastic food and enough entertainment to make the outside world irrelevant as long as our doors are open.

Halfway down Leake Street (the Graffiti Tunnel). Please do not go to the Launcelot Street entrance. The venue can be hard to find – please leave more time than you usually would.